Bruno Tonioli Quotes

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.

Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

I suppose my Iranian identity is one of the driving forces for being a writer: I want to set the record straight about who I really am.

I want to keep talking about my people and my country in my own language.

When I took part in European leaders summits, it was sometimes unpleasant for me to hear Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and Italian friends speak English, although I admit that on an informal basis, first contacts can be made in this language. Nevertheless, I will defend everywhere the use of the French language.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

People are always saying, English, English, English rose, and I just feel so completely different.

Every language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.

It always trips me out that America, the most powerful and magnificent nation in the history of the world, whose might was built by immigrants from all over the world, only speaks one language.

Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

A different language is a different vision of life.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

My biggest regret is that I didn't teach my two children how to speak Spanish.

For the benefit of those who are not bilingual, I will now continue in English.

A nation is the totality of people who speak the same language.

I am critical of the parochial understanding of the Francophone movement and feel that it is used as a justification for not learning the language of the “other”. Those who respect the “other” are those who know them, and those who reject the language of the “other” are at a disadvantage. Learning the language of the “other” does not contradict our rejection of the dominance of their language, which is quite valid in my opinion.

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

Everybody wants to say who they are and where they're from. And the easiest and cheapest and most universal way of doing that is through their accent.

I am only one-eighth the writer I might have been had I contained all the fragmented languages of Trinidad.

I'm always very careful to say I'm Irish-Ethiopian because I feel Ethiopian and I look Ethiopian and I am Ethiopian. But there are 81 languages in Ethiopia, and I don't know any of them.